by Bruce Wagner
In time, the presence of a county social worker was announced; a pale, bespectacled child-woman appeared not twenty minutes later. She seemed to Lani more a rookie kindergarten teacher than a person who potentially held the life of a child in her hands. Lani explained about her husband finding the girl and how fortuitous it was that she, Lani Mott, “just happened to be a court-appointed special advocate for children.” At first, the clueless social worker assumed Lani had somehow—in whatever capacity—already been assigned the case. It was obvious she was just another overworked CSW who had never even heard of the illustrious advocacy program to which the baker’s wife belonged; most social workers hadn’t, even though volunteers like Lani made their lives so much easier. Who could blame them? County caseloads were so heavy that they barely remembered their own names.
When the paperwork was done, the CSW and her ward—who had by now officially declared herself Edith Stein—traveled to a DCFS building on 6th Street. Lani and Amaryllis found themselves in yet another room with utility tables and disorderly rows of stuffed animals. This one had peppy sky-blue walls, beanbag chairs and a real live boy, who had the slack, glazed look of an airport toddler studying strangers while they alit. During a lunch of take-out McDonald’s, Amaryllis made further inquiries about her brother and sister, but the CSW, who for some reason now referred to herself as a “clients’-rights manager,” could find no record of the “Stein” siblings in the computer. (“It’s really unusual to find Jews in the system,” she said offhandedly, and Lani thought that inappropriate.) The orphan, in a great war with herself, nearly exposed the babies as Kornfelds to expedite their discovery; but in the end, reasoned that might put them in danger.
At the end of the afternoon, having advocated and managed all manner of prickly clients’ rights, the CSW announced that a “suitable placement” had been found. Mrs. Mott gave aka Edith a hug and the girl followed her to the hall like a stray when she left. For Lani, that was the worst part.
They crawled through downtown traffic, onto the Harbor Freeway. Amaryllis wondered what was meant by “placement”—and a suitable one at that—but was afraid to ask. A placement was not quite a place; that meant she was going to a not-quite someplace. Or maybe it was even more than a place … She angrily gritted her teeth at the thought of Topsy dropping her off like a package, shooing her toward the stranger in the silly cook’s hat, cruelly sealing her fate. Then, seeing his hairy face and kind, cookie-size eyes float before her like a genie’s, remembering how all those weeks he had fed her and soothed her then run with her in the night; watching herself turn traitorously on her only friend in the world, she wept with shame. Seeing her tears, the woman reached for a teddy—the backseat was chock-full of the furry placebos, shoveled in by the truckload.
If the Department of Children and Family Services could be counted on for anything, it was stuffed animals. A child might collect dozens even as his soul was being killed; suchwise, the Department would not fail. It was a child’s inviolable right to bear arms and bear legs and bear tummies, to have and to hold and to clutch and to sob against a sad, soft donated thing staring back with synthetic, understanding eyes that could do no harm. (In protecting the rights of bears and child-bearing, the Department inarguably stood in the vanguard.) She handed a cub to Amaryllis, who instantly drew it to aching, purulent breast. Caressing the bereft girl’s head, the CSW hassled her with kindness, tongue clicks and gentle shooshing I knows (as if she really did), coos and moans and It’ll be all rights (as if it really would).
Wide-open spaces now. She asked where they were going and the woman said Tunga Canyon. A canyon!—another place to get lost in … another place not to find her precious babies. She may as well have said Alaska.
They arrived in darkness at the house on Chimney Smoke Road, greeted porch-side by the folksily winning Mrs. Woolery, sixtyish and straight out of a Knott’s Berry Farm parade. “It’s Earlymae—none uh Mrs. Woolery for my kids. Call me Earlymae!” she said, squatting eye to eye with Amaryllis. “Grown-ups the ones call me Mrs. Woolery.” Crystel Hallohan, a brunette the same size and age as the newcomer, attached herself to Amaryllis like a barnacle. An anarchic, gleeful boy in decal’d bike helmet and flannel PJs ran from the house jubilantly screaming. As Mrs. Woolery led them to the front door—drying Amaryllis’s tears with a sleeve as they went—a bruised green-brown Wagoneer pulled up, disgorging a smiling Latino in ill-fitting sport coat, tie and teeth. He carried a mess of grocery bags, paper-in-plastic. Mrs. Woolery introduced him as Jilbo, then laughingly told him to “hup to.” Grinning, he made a mock dash to the front door while the helmeted boy dervished after, spinning and shrieking and scrimmaging.
It was close and cluttered inside. There were so many nooks, knickknacks and promise of rooms that Amaryllis felt she’d entered a honeycomb hive. Mrs. Woolery entreated Crystel to please finish cleaning for their guest—she said the place was in a bit of a shambles, which it wasn’t—but first the girl walked Amaryllis over to the flowery couch and set her down like a fragile, favorite doll.
The professionals immediately set about finalizing documents. The boy whirled about in his test-pilot helmet, taking all the dips, turns and tangents of a rubber band wind-up plane; Mrs. Woolery told him for heaven’s sake to come in for a landing, while occasionally calling to the kitchen to goad Jilbo into “hupping it with dinner” unless he wanted them all to starve. After one such encouragement, she winked at the CSW, remarking how Jilbo was “short for Gilberto. I give everyone a name. Now our Jilbo is what they call a slow mover—not like our friend,” she said, indicating the fly-boy with a hitchhiker’s jab of her painted thumb. She had a smoker’s pulmonary laugh, even though she’d quit years back. “That’s Dennis—I call him Dennis the Phantom Menace!” Laughing again, one heard the gritty gear-teeth of bronchi engage, her thick white Maidenform corseting a bosomy round-the-clock excavation of wheezing water, quartz and steam.
The benumbed Amaryllis watched MUTE flash on the big-screen television over QVC faces. After a brief absence, Crystel reappeared and dutifully presented her with a bouquet of Barbies. Mrs. Woolery peered benevolently from half-glasses and told Crissie Fits—“We call her Crissie Fits ’cause she always fittin’. But she’s a good ol’ girl”—not to bother the “newbie,” but the CSW said it was sweet and encouraged Edith to say thank you. (“We think that’s her name,” said the social worker.)
Amaryllis demurred, limply taking a doll by its thin, hard, dirty nude leg. Dennis flew to the rear of the house and screamed so shrilly that dogs outside began to bark. Mrs. Woolery rolled her eyes and shouted for Jilbo to “Hup the food now, ’fore Dennis the Menace blows a gasket! Vamanos caballero!”
When they finished signing the aforesaid papers, the CSW knelt and told Amaryllis she probably wouldn’t be seeing her again very soon. Which meant never. Her job was to help children find nice homes during times of emergency and now, she said, another person would be coming “for follow-up.” Amaryllis almost asked right then about the babies, but didn’t have it in her. Mrs. Woolery palmed the orphan’s forehead and said with some concern, “You’re warm as a toaster.” She told Crystel to get some Bayer’s and start a cool tub. Jilbo came from the kitchen grinning like a square dancer to see the social worker off.
She didn’t feel like taking a bath and was glad Mrs. Woolery led her straight to bed without a fuss, tucking her in with tender words. It’d been weeks since she slept on a mattress. The lights went off; suddenly Amaryllis was alone and afraid. She shut her eyes and felt heavier than a stone. After falling like that awhile—it was not unpleasant—she suddenly felt the presence of another. A small hot hand touched her wrist, but her eyes wouldn’t open. A voice told her not to worry … Crystel’s voice. She would stay by her side, she said, until sleep came. The girl didn’t have long to wait.
The orphan dreamed of the St. George. Her mother smelled so bad it was time to move, but when she went to the kitchen to collect the babies, they were gone. Then she was ru
nning through the dark, with Topsy and the froggy Korean chasing her sister and brother up ahead; Amaryllis lagged behind. “Courage!” he shouted, his big tousled head turning back. “Courage, or you’ll never see them again!” As she ran, her chest ached from its wounds and she’d had enough. When she gave up pursuit, the policewoman escorted her to a movie set and the boy who first called himself Toulouse took her hand. They raced through a crowd of adoring faces; she felt warm and giddy as he pulled her along. “You’re late!” he said, sternly.
Amaryllis was starring in a movie and she was late.
Pitch-dark night. A night and a place that did not belong to her.
Mrs. Woolery’s night …
Breathing sounds. She blinks, accustoming her eyes. Low ceiling above. No: another bed—she’s on a bottom bunk. Breathing’s louder now, warren-like, communal. Rasp, cough, suspiration. Germy close-quarters smell. Bright mote of moonlight reflected on helmet of sleeping boy. Her chest throbbing, infected nipple. Stomach spasms and at first she does not know why; roiling onslaught of tears, which she stanches. She cannot afford that. Where is my mother? she wonders, drawing air through mouth so as not to make a sound. What happened to my—someone stands in door now, not Mrs. Woolery, staring. Floats closer. Amaryllis trembles, gathering courage to bolt, shrinks back instead, spine to wall, pillow to chest. A pretty, reed-thin black girl engulfed in a XXXL jersey stands at the bunk and ducks down for a better look with hollow eyes.
“What do you want!” Amaryllis exclaims.
The wraith smiles, then retreats. As she exits, the boy with the helmet shifts and snorts from his futon. A jack-in-the-box head hangs before her upside down, causing Amaryllis to gasp—Crystel, from the upper bunk.
“That’s Shanggerla. She always walks around at night. Sometimes she sleeps in the kitchen.”
Amaryllis coughs. Crystel hops off the bed and brings her a Big Gulp. Amaryllis sucks the tepid soda from a fat straw.
“You don’t look like an Edith.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Ten months.”
“Do you have a social worker?”
“A man, but you won’t get him. He never comes. Everyone gets different ones. Do you have meds?”
Amaryllis didn’t know what she meant.
“Where were you before?”
“With my mom.”
She pulls Amaryllis from the bed by the wrist. “Come on!”
“Where are we going?”
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
“What if they wake up?”
“Earlymae don’t stay here—and Jilbo comes in the morning. At night, we party!”
The fluorescent kitchen shocks her eyes. An unplugged refrigerator, girdled by thick chain, is studded with Polaroids pinned by animal magnets—feisty former residents. Stucco walls wear a caved-in band just below eye level, courtesy, says Crystel, of the prolific, helmeted skull of Dennis the Phantom Menace; some parts colored by spongy swatches of dried blood. All the cutlery drawers are missing and the cabinets have no doors, excepting one made of metal bolted to the top of the padlocked fridge.
The girl in the XXXL lists into shiny, stale air, her long, smooth olive arm hovering over the hairline-fractured counter like a dowser. Esurient eyes, emeralds veiled in mucus, periodically widen, twitched by electrical current; when they close, she smiles as if listening to voices. Crystel moistens Shanggerla’s lips with a paper towel.
“She’s on so many meds! Aren’t you, Shangg?”
The eyes widen, twitch, vanish. She smiles inwardly. The spidery arm dowses.
“Shanggerla means paradise—that’s what Earlymae says. Shangg’s a sniffer. Tell her what gang you’re from.”
She bends at the waist so that she’s nearly parallel to the ground. “The Rollin’ Tens!”
“And what is ‘Ten’ short for?”
“It mean ten thousand.”
“Ten thousand blocks,” said Crystel, translating for Amaryllis. She turns back to Shanggerla. “Tell Edith where the Rollin’ Tens are from.”
“Rollin’ Tens from Venus. They Crips.”
“Venice isn’t big enough for ten thousand blocks, nigger!”
“Venus! They taggers from Venus.”
“The planet,” adds Crystel, winking at Amaryllis.
“Venus spin backward,” she giggles. “The Rollin’ Tens is from Mar Vista!”
“You mean Mars Vista!”
“Vista del Mars!”
“And who are the Tens at war with, Shangg?”
“Crystel, it so sad,” says Shanggerla, face unexpectedly contorting in tears.
“Shangg loves Venus Williams.”
“Yes I do. And her sister too.”
“She likes anything called Venus. Tell Edith your placements, Shangg.”
That word again …
Her long body hovers as she prepares to respond.
“Well, uh, Vista del Mar … and Mac. And Penny Lane. Pride House and Passageways. CLI—and Sanctuary. Orangewood. Irvine! An’ Hudson-Lyndsey!”
“Family Solution?”
“Family Solution!”
“Were you at VisionQuest?”
“Summit Quest.”
“Olive View?”
“I was, you know, Olive Crest.”
“They should have put you in Venus View and Venus Crest!”
“Penis View.” She laughs out loud.
“Dennis was Olive Crest—I think.”
“Dennie was at Family Solutions and COPES. And New Alternatives. Dennie the Mennie was maybe at Five Acres—that’s where he start bangin’ his haid.”
“He almost burned that place down. Now they bring him to Charters whenever he cracks his skull. Dennis calls hospitals ‘vacation.’ You gonna get him into the Tens, Shangg?”
“Dennis can’t be in the Tens!”
“Why not.”
“His penis too white.” She covers her mouth in silent hilarity.
“He likes Charters,” says Crystel, “ ’cause they give him candy and the nurses give him hugs. Isn’t that sick?”
“He suck their titties.”
“What’s wrong with him?” asks Amaryllis.
“ ’Tension deficit. Obsess compulse. I was at COPES,” she muses. “I think when I was, two. I think I was at Mac. You couldn’t wear your own clothes—the girls wore shirts with little bear stamps. I was at an Olive … I don’t know if it was Crest or View. Were you with a family, Shangg?”
“They did try that.”
“Where were you?” Crystel asks, turning to Amaryllis.
“Just with my mom.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died.”
“Did he kill her?”
“Who?”
“Your dad.”
Amaryllis shakes her head. “She was lying in the bed.”
“Well, who did kill her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you have a dad?”
“I don’t know.”
AKA Crissie Fits fishes small, blondish arm into hole in the wall, past meteorites of stucco dangling in chicken wire. Like a Martha Stewart of the damned, arranges Circle K booty on paper plates with garnishings of leaves and petals: Funyun rings, Fritos Racerz, Lunchables, Li’l Angels, POWERade, Skittles, kosher dill spears, Clamato, Twizzlers, Peppermint Patties, and two Ben & Jerry’s—warm, sopping Chubby Hubby and Chunky Monkey. Among the few nonedibles are a Cherie makeup set and an “instant” geranium windowsill basket. Crystel lays out a green terry-cloth towel and they picnic right there on the floor.
For the first time, Amaryllis focuses on the curious little girl. She is four and a half feet tall, and wears lemon-colored shadow, smudged so opposing question marks curve from eyelid to cheek, each point ending at the downturned corners of a precocious mouth. Black-brown hair bunched into berserk braids tied together with wire hanger and red twine. She is stylish, zany and spirited, and, like Amaryllis, bites her nails to the quick. The latt
er’s eyes flit to the metal cabinet above the fridge.
“Meds,” enlightens Crystel.
“What are they?”
“Dennie pee hisself from the Juice Bar,” laughs Shanggerla from behind closed eyes.
Reanimated, Crystel shouts that they have to go see if Dennis peed the bed or Earlymae will kick their ass. Shanggerla stays cross-legged on the floor, meditations—and medications—unknown. Crystel grabs Amaryllis’s wrist again and races down the hall.
“Look, look!” she squeals, flipping on a light. “He shit, he shit, he shit!”
The boy lies in the position last seen. A hastily fastened diaper could not absorb the coiled, watery discharge; it has spilled onto the futon, which was, fortunately, wrapped in lawn and leaf–size Glad bags. She asks if Amaryllis wants to see his head, ignoring the orphan’s pleas not to remove the helmet.
“Thorazine makes him shit,” says Crystel, setting upon the strap and delicately lifting off the hard shell. Though bristled hair has spottily grown, the crown resembles a moon pelted through millennia by all manner of celestial debris.
Amaryllis backs into the bunk—aftertaste of beggar’s banquet, nauseating closeness of room, stench of unconscious boy and sight of perky wolfish girl looming over has done her no real good. Crystel, ever attuned, iterates that Dennis is sleeping and no harm has been done.
Then, as if to make amends—to the boy and to her new friend, whom Crystel already loves and is determined to advise and protect—she sets to cleaning up the mess.
CHAPTER 17
When a Child Dies in the Home
Which is more onerous, politics or sentimentality? It is difficult to choose. To suggest that the perils of Amaryllis Kornfeld might have been relieved by courageous legislation is naïve; likewise, the easy fetish of emotion makes for cheap martyrdom. Let neither road be taken—pray that makes all the difference.
On Friday, they went to court, as required by law; the details of their visit will later be aired. For now, we are ready to tour the communal home of Earlymae Woolery. Dawn light is conducive to exploration, and the children are asleep. The white Sedan DeVille of the matron of the house won’t pull into the driveway until ten (and then, only because of the new immigrant). Usually, each morning from seven till noon, Jilbo alone is entrusted with the brood.